Hitherto, as a material for air filters for clean rooms, a filter material prepared by adding a binder to glass fibers and subjecting the resulting glass fibers to processing by a paper manufacturing machine is frequently used. However, in such materials, there are various problems. For example, the existence of small fibers attached to the filter material, the increase of a pressure loss in the case of increasing the amount of a binder for preventing the self dust generation at working or bending the filter material (JP-A-63-16019) (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application), etc. Furthermore, in the filter material, there is also a problem that when the filter material comes in contact with a certain kind of chemicals such as hydrofluoric acid, the glass and binder are deteriorated to cause the generation of dusts.
For solving these problems, recently, a PTFE porous film is used in various fields as the filter material for filter. The PTFE film is useful as the filter materials for filters used in the fields requiring severe clean environment, such as a semiconductor production, etc., as described in JP-A-59-152825, 3-221541, 5-202217, and 7-196831, and PCT WO 94/16802).
Because such a useful PTFE porous film itself has a weak strength, a non-woven fabric or a woven fabric of polyethylene, polyester, etc., is laminated as a reinforcing material to improve the strength and the folding workability thereof.
However, there is a problem that a gas such as 2,6-di-tert-butyl-p-cresol (BHT), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), etc., which is said to give bad influences on the products in the field of the semiconductor production requiring a severe clean environment, is leaked from the non-woven fabric which is laminated as the reinforcing material, though the PTFE is a clean material.